March 27, 2021–March 6, 2022
beuys 2021 welcomes you back from the summer break with an exciting continuation of the centenary programme.
The autumn begins for beuys 2021 with new exhibitions opening across North Rhine-Westphalia. The formative photographs of Ute Klophaus will be on view at the Von der Heydt-Museum in Wuppertal. The relationship between Beuys and Duchamp is the subject of a new show at the Kaiser Wilhelm Museum in Krefeld. The Hartware MedienKunstVerein (HKMV) Dortmund will be looking at where Beuys meets technoshamanism, Kunstmuseum Bonn will explore Beuys’s multiples as a potential “ticket to the future” and Museum Schloss Moyland will complement its exhibition Joseph Beuys and the Shamans with an exhibition on Beuys’s unique approach to printed matter. The programme also includes labs, concerts, conferences and “beuysparcours,” a festival weekend on September 18 and 19.
Stay connected: Please find the complete programme with all participating museums and institutions here and tourist advice here.
“Sculptural Democracy: Forms of the ‘We’”
“Sculptural Democracy: Forms of the ‘We’” is a non-disciplinary laboratory for collective and democratic city-making. It is dedicated to the critical examination of Joseph Beuys’s radical vision of a democracy based on the principles of sculpture. Centred around a spectacular experimental architecture developed by raumlaborberlin in the heart of Düsseldorf, the programme has been unfolding online and in public space since June 2021. The autumn programme includes parliaments, performances and a live-in lab.
Art and Party Politics: Parliaments and Performances
Düsseldorfer Schauspielhaus
August 27–28, 2021
Prominent representatives of German political parties founded on principles of art, creativity and radical democracy meet to perform and discuss their ideas. From the German Greens party, of which Beuys was a founding member, to the Hip-Hop party, Die Urbane, formed in 2017, the participants will critically examine the practices, possibilities and problems of establishing and sustaining radically democratic political parties in today’s world. Entry is free.
Live-in Lab
Gustaf-Gründgens-Platz
September 22–29, 2021
Over the course of a week, five different workshops will question the protocols of democratic city-making. New collective forms of living together will be explored in democracy theory ateliers and tested in artistic actions. The open spatial structure of the lab allows situations of working, cooking and living together to merge with the urban space and become a site of encounter and conversation.
Heiner Goebbels: A House of Call – My Imaginary Notebook (2020/21)
Ensemble Modern Orchestra
Tonhalle Düsseldorf
September 7, 2021, 8pm
Heiner Goebbels is inspired by Joseph Beuys’s musical fluxus actions and the political and ecological dimensions of his art. His most recent orchestral work has multiple connections with prominent themes in the artist’s work. Voices from Central Asia, Georgia and Iran are as much a part of the composition as ritual language forms devised by Samuel Beckett and Heiner Müller. These are juxtaposed with shamanistic recitations by indigenous peoples in Colombia. The orchestra reacts to these cries, utterances, prayers and incantations in a kind of secular responsory.
Music from the Future: A 24-hour musical homage to Joseph Beuys
K21 Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen
September 18–19, 2021, from 4 pm
The point of departure for this homage to Joseph Beuys, which kicks off the festival weekend »beuysparcours«, is the artist’s longstanding interest in the work and thought of French composer Erik Satie: 24 musicians from different disciplines, nations, professions and generations, selected by the well-known music specialist Matthias Osterwold, will present a nuanced performance of Satie’s Vexations for piano. Each will play for an hour before handing over to the next performer. Performers include Hauschka, Makiko Nishikaze and Heloisa Amaral. Entry is free.
The Problem with Beuys: On the Mentality and Reception History of the Artist
Colloquium
Haus der Universität am Schadowplatz, Düsseldorf
October 15–16, 2021
Can Joseph Beuys’s work be understood as a form of coming to terms with history, as a sincere attempt at transformation? Or was he, as the art historian Benjamin Buchloh argued as early as 1980, a disingenuous master of repression who, with much mysticism and charlatanry, glossed over his national socialist past? Did he remain, as Beat Wyss postulated in 2008 and Hans Peter Riegel in 2013, the eternal Hitler youth? An obscurantist dazzler who to this day manages to mesmerise people around the world?
As a major highlight of the Beuys centenary these and other key questions will be addressed at a colloquium organised by the Heinrich-Heine-Universität Düsseldorf. The programme is divided into four sections exploring the media response to the artist, his proximity to right-wing imagery and ideology, his esoteric leanings and the long-term impact of copyright law and censorship on his reception.
Contact
Heinrich-Heine-University Düsseldorf
Projekt Office beuys 2021
Department of Art History
Universitätsstraße 1
40225 Düsseldorf
Press: Kathrin Luz, beuys 2021, T +49 0 171 3102472 / kl [at] luz-communication.de
